Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl was recently published by Rescue Press, in the Open Prose Series. (The Open Prose Series, edited by Hilary Plum and Zach Savich, is now open for submissions until January 31.) Lawlor read at many wonderful independent bookstores around the country, including Porter Square Books, R.J. Julia, Penn Book Center, BGSQD, Spoonbill & Sugartown, Amherst Books, Odyssey Books, and Dog Eared Books. In this Q&A with Vesto PR fiction associate Claudia Acevedo, and designed by Kurt Stengel, Lawlor discusses their novel, inspirations, and LGBTQ fiction today:
How can we dismantle the structures that prevent LGBTQ writers, especially writers of color, from becoming writers in the first place, and then from getting that work into readers’ hands?
Reviews of Paul can be found in The New Yorker, LA Review of Books, Bookforum, The Believer, and Lambda Literary, among others.